What to Read in Indian Express Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

Editorial 1: Emergency and its lessons

Context

The Emergency was imposed exactly 50 years ago on June 25, 1975.

Historical & social context

• Indira Gandhi came to power with a landslide victory in 1971, but her government soon faced multiple crises.
• The 1971 India-Pak war, droughts, and the 1973 oil shockseverely impacted the economy, leading to widespread hardship.
• Corruption and misgovernance further fueled public anger. In February 1974, the Navnirman students’ movement in Gujaratforced Congress CM Chimanbhai Patel to resign over corruption.
• Inspired by this, a similar students’ movement emerged in Bihar, supported by socialists and right-wing groups under the Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti.
• Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), a Gandhian and Quit India Movement veteran, became its leader.
• On June 5, 1974, he called for a “sampoorna kranti” (total revolution) at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan, sparking a massive anti-government movement.
• JP travelled across India, rallying against Indira’s rule. The movement gained momentum when, on June 12, 1975, the Allahabad High Court found Indira guiltyof electoral malpractice, nullifying her 1971 Lok Sabha win.
• Amid rising demands for her resignation, Emergency was declared on June 25.
• Media was censored, and the nation learned of the Emergency via Indira’s radio broadcast on June 26.

Indira’s rule by decree

• The Emergency, imposed on June 25, 1975, and lasting until March 21, 1977, marked one of the darkest periods in Indian democracy.
• Using special constitutional provisions, Indira Gandhi’s government centralized power, effectively turning India’s federal structure into a unitary one.
• While state governments remained in place, they were brought under total control of the Centre.
• Parliament legislated on state subjects, and financial arrangements between the Union and states were altered with presidential approval.
• Most opposition leaders, including Jayaprakash Narayan, were jailed. Around 1.12 lakh people were detained under harsh laws like MISA, COFEPOSA, and the Defence of India Act.
• With dissent crushed, Parliament passed sweeping constitutional changes, including the 42nd Amendment of 1976. This amendment severely curtailed judicial powers, expanded Parliament’s authority over the Constitution, and shielded laws implementing directive principles from judicial review.
• Fundamental rights, especially the freedom of speech under Article 19(1)(a), were suspended. Newspapers faced pre-censorship.
• Meanwhile, Sanjay Gandhi led a controversial “five-point programme,” which included forced sterilizations and slum demolitions.
• To cling to power, the Lok Sabha’s term was extended by a year in 1976, delaying elections that were originally due.

Emergency lifted, Indira routed

• For no apparent reason, Indira Gandhi decided to lift the Emergency early in 1977. As it happened, she and her party were routed in the election of 1977.
• The Janata Party — the product of the merger of the Jana Sangh, Congress (O), the socialists and Bharatiya Lok Dal —came to power, and Morarji Desai became India’s first non-Congress PM.
• Many Constitutional changes effected during the Emergency were reversed. Judicial review of a Proclamation of Emergency was made possible again, and it was made mandatory for such a Proclamation to be passed in both Houses of Parliament by a special majority— a majority of the total strength of the House and not less than two-thirds of members present and voting — within a month.
• The 44th Amendment replaced the words “internal disturbance”as a ground for the imposition of Emergency with “armed rebellion”.

Emergency’s enduring legacy

• The post-Emergency Parliament saw the coming together of the social forces behind the Jana Sangh and the socialists — the Hindutva upper castes, and the Lohiaite agrarian and artisanal castes.
• The Janata government appointed the Mandal Commission to look into OBC quotas, which eventually propelled the rise of the OBCs in North India.
• The Emergency also gave India a crop of young leaders who would dominate politicsfor several decades — Lalu Prasad Yadav, George Fernandes, Arun Jaitley, Ram Vilas Paswan, and many others.

Conclusion

Fifty years later, the Emergency reminds us how easily power can be misused. It changed Indian politics, gave rise to new leaders, and showed the strength of democracy when people chose to fight back.

 

Editorial 2: Democracy’s early warning system

Context

Now beset by a rising tide of strong-armed rulers and demagogues worldwide, democracy is also the best check on their unrestrained power. Those who resisted the Emergency understood this.

Rising despotism

• Amidst the worsening global commotions, triggered by factors ranging from imperial power rivalries, unending wars, border closures and trade and tariff disputes to pandemics, genocides, extreme weather events, collapsing banks and citizen disaffection, a new kind of despotism with thoroughly 21st-century characteristics is everywhere on the rise.
• Despotism is key to understanding global threats to democracy—from authoritarian states like Russia, China, and Iran to rising demagogues in Hungary, Mexico, Israel, and the US.
• These leaders challenge power-sharing democracies, undermining democratic values and fueling attacks on democratic institutions worldwide.
• Despotism is a unique form of rule that defies traditional political norms. It is a pseudo-democratic system led by rulers skilled in manipulating people’s lives to gain support and obedience.
• The outcome is a powerful, top-down pyramid of authoritythat maintains millions of loyal supporters at home and garners admirers internationally, allowing despotic regimes to sustain and expand their influence with deceptive ease.

Despots in Alliance

• The spread of despotism is alarming, with authoritarian leaders forming powerful alliances.
• Donald Trump’s May 2025 tour of West Asia exemplified this, as he was warmly welcomed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.Lavish ceremonies, fighter jet escorts, and grand honors highlighted their solidarity.
• Amid the spectacle, trillion-dollar business and defence deals were signed, including plans for a joint nuclear energy program and AI chip imports.

The True Value of Democracy

• Democracy is much more than popular self-government based on free and fair elections.It is to recognise the need to rein in any form of power that harms lives by bringing hardship, sorrow and indignity.
• To be a democrat is to believe that Democracy is a shape-shifting way of protecting humans and their biosphere against the corrupting effects of unaccountable power.
• This is its radical potential: Democracy is the defiant insistence that people’s lives are never fixed, that all things, human and non-human, are built on the shifting sands of space-time, and that no person or group, no matter how much power they hold, can be trusted permanently, in any context, to govern the lives of others.
• This was surely the wisdom and sentiment motivating those people from many walks of life who bravely resisted Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule between June 1975 and March 1977.
• They understood that democracy is a means of damage prevention. It’s an early warning system, a way of enabling citizens, and whole organisations and networks, to sound the alarm whenever they suspect that others are about to cause them harm, or when calamities are already bearing down on their heads.

Conclusion

Democracy brings things back to Earth. It serves as a reality check on unrestrained power exercised by strong-armed despots and demagogues backed by “the people”. It is the best means so far invented of ensuring that those in charge of organisations don’t stray into cuckoo land, wander into territory where misadventures of power are concealed by lies, silence and weaponised nonsense.